” Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) introduced legislation on Tuesday to prevent members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists after they leave office.

Blum, a freshman lawmaker, argued his bill would help limit lobbyists’ influence on the legislative process so members of Congress won’t feel pressured to cater to their wishes for their own self-interest.

” This bill would finally close the revolving door between Congress and special interest groups, restoring integrity to our political system and ensuring that politicians focus on representing their constituents instead of catering to lobbying groups who offer a lucrative post-electoral career,” Blum said in a statement.

” This lifetime ban on lobbying is another step in that effort to make Congress more accountable to the people by reducing the incentive for our elected officials to use their position for their own personal gain,” Blum added.”

” Many on the right and the left would concede that America’s immigration system is broken, but few acknowledge that it is also hopelessly corrupt. There should be little doubt about the immorality at the heart of the immigration and naturalization process following an inspector general report released on Tuesday that alleges at least one ranking Department of Homeland Security official showed “an appearance of favoritism” and granted “special access” to those seeking green cards and visas for immigrants associated with Democrat-linked wealthy investors.

“ The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department meddled in three high-profile immigration cases, giving special treatment to applications from wealthy and well-connected immigrants after calls from major Democrats despite the objections of career employees, the department’s inspector general concluded in a report Tuesday,” The Washington Times reported on Tuesday.

Alejandro Mayorkas, who was elevated from head of the department’s legal immigration agency to be deputy secretary while the investigation was ongoing, also angered many of his colleagues by getting involved in the cases, and “created an appearance of favoritism and special access” for the wealthy immigrants, the inspector general concluded.

Inspector General John Roth said the cases involved major Democrats: former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Sen. Harry Reid, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Anthony Rodham, brother of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

” As the federal government was wrapping up its antitrust investigation of Google Inc., company executives had a flurry of meetings with top officials at the White House and Federal Trade Commission, the agency running the probe.

The documents don’t show exactly what was discussed in late 2012. Soon afterward, the FTC closed its investigation after Google agreed to make voluntary changes to its business practices. (See the FTC document on Google).

Google’s access to high-ranking Obama administration officials during a critical phase of the antitrust probe is one sign of the Internet giant’s reach in Washington. Since Mr. Obama took office, employees of the Mountain View, Calif., company have visited the White House for meetings with senior officials about 230 times, or an average of roughly once a week, according to the visitor logs reviewed by the Journal.”

” Republican senators Mike Lee, Ben Sasse, and Rand Paul have all been high profile opponents of the Obama administrations current plan to regulate the internet — in particular, Lee has called the regulation a government “takeover” of the internet and says it amounts to a “a massive tax increase on the middle class, being passed in the dead of night without the American public really being made aware of what is going on.”

And when Lee says that the American public isn’t aware of what’s going on, that is in no way hyperbole. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has emerged as a hero for those opposed to the regulation because Pai has been taking to the airwaves decrying the fact that the public is not allowed to see 332 pages of proposed internet regulation before they are potentially passed. Pai’s crusade to make the proposed regulations public is the theme of the the latest ad from Protect Internet Freedom: ” (see above)

Like every other promise from the most “honest , open and transparent” administration ever , it’s bull***t . For those with selective memory the video below contains all the promises on transparency and openness in one convenient location:

” The head of a Justice Department law enforcement office used his position to secure a job for his son and other relatives, the agency’s internal watchdog said Wednesday, the latest in a string of reports that have repeatedly found examples of nepotism at the department.

It’s not the first example of nepotism at Eric Holder’s Justice Department. A November investigation by the inspector general found that certain offices in the department had a “pervasive culture of nepotism and favoritism.” It’s at least the fifth inspector general report since 2004 to find hiring problems at the agency.

“ There is no room for nepotism in the federal government’s hiring practices,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “Those hired to serve taxpayers must earn — not be given — the job. I urge the Department of Justice to take the appropriate disciplinary actions for such an abuse of authority.”

The INTERPOL office’s Executive Director, Warren Lewis, also abused his position to help three people with connections to his son obtain jobs at the agency — even though he had never personally met two of them, investigators said.

“ Lewis had no personal knowledge of their professional abilities,” the inspector general said. “After the three individuals all failed to make the certified lists of qualified applicants, Lewis took steps to overcome their exclusion.”

” In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama predicted that the U.S. would have “a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.”

The president backed up his prediction with $2.4 billion in federal grants to companies producing lithium-ion batteries for plug-in cars.

But reality hasn’t even come close.

Despite massive federal spending on electric vehicles, which is expected to total $7.9 billion through 2019, there are currently just 286,390 plug-in vehicles on the nation’s roads today, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA).

That’s 72 percent lower than the million electric vehicles the president predicted four years ago. And with gasoline prices now averaging $2.06 per gallon, the lowest they’ve been since April 2009, that percentage is not likely to change any time soon.”

Lord knows he gave away enough of our tax dollars in his attempt to make it happen , and line his crony’s pockets , but his prognostication still came up short … by miles .

” Although Obama backed up his prediction four years ago with $2.4 billion in federal grants to companies producing lithium-ion batteries to power electric cars, there has been no major breakthroughs that make them economically competitive with gas- and diesel-fueled vehicles, which have become far more fuel-efficient in the meantime.

In fact, with new advances being made in the internal combustion engine, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles will still make up 95 percent of all light duty vehicles sold in 2040. “

” President Obama is unveiling a $3.99 trillion budget that is “designed to bring middle class economics into the 21st Century,” the White House announced Monday.

The proposed budget “invests in helping working families make their paychecks go further, preparing hardworking Americans to earn higher wages, and creating the infrastructure that allows businesses to thrive and create good, high-paying jobs,” the White House said in a statement.

To pay for new tax credits and other programs involving education, child care, paid leave, and new road and bridge construction, the budget calls for tax hikes on wealthier Americans by closing certain loopholes.

Congressional Republicans said the president’s proposals — many of which leaked out in advance of Monday’s announcement — involve too many tax hikes and high-spending programs.”

Here are just a few of the goodies to be redistributed by the State under “Uncle” Barack’s proposed budget :

” Among the economic plans in the proposed budget:

• A child care tax credit of up to $3,000 per child.

• $750 million for a Department of Education preschool development program, an increase of $500 million.

• More than $3 billion for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.

• A $500 tax credit for “second earners” in working families.

• A program encouraging paid leave programs for employees.

• Two years of community college tuition for qualified students, a program that would cost $60 billion over 10 years.

” Hillary Clinton took more than 200 privately chartered flights at taxpayer expense during her eight years in the U.S. Senate, sometimes using the jets of corporations and major campaign donors as she racked up $225,756 in flight costs.

Clinton, 67, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, reported the travel in official filings with the Senate. The records were provided to Bloomberg News by a Republican operative.

Some of the companies whose planes she used included Coca-Cola Co., Citigroup Inc. and Saban Capital Group Inc.

While the flights fell within congressional rules and were not out of the ordinary for senators at the time, they could play into the emerging Republican line of attack that Clinton’s wealth and years in government office have left her out of touch with the voters she’ll court on the campaign trail.

Republican Mitt Romney, who is considering another bid for president, took a swipe at Clinton’s suggestion to voters that “corporations and businesses” don’t create jobs when he spoke in Starkville, Mississippi, last night.”

” The plaintiffs law firm Weitz and Luxenberg, which employed Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, is said to have provided Mr. Silver with $5.3 million in referral fees, despite his having “never performed any legal work whatsoever,” according to the prosecutors.

If millions of cash for no work sounds like a generous arrangement, it’s not the first time the firm has shown its generosity. According to the Observer’s research, over the last two cycles, members of the law firm has given at least $600,000 to federal candidates, with over 99% of that going to Democrats. The top three recipients in 2013-2014 included Harry Reid ($44,400), Bruce Braley ($39,675) and Kay Hagan ($10,050); in 2011-2012, the top three were Barack Obama ($29,421), Heidi Heitkamp ($22,400) and Mazie Hirono ($22,400). The top ten recipients in both cycles were all Democrats.

But even these amounts, capped by federal law, pale next to the dollars showered upon candidates for office in New York State. And although no wrongdoing has thus far been attributed to the law firm, it’s at least worth noting that two of the biggest recipients were both involved with the Moreland Commission, which was mysteriously and abruptly disbanded by the governor in March 2014 after less than a year on task of probing public corruption.”

” Seven years after the recession began, only one in 50 U.S. counties has fully bounced back, according to a study the National Association of Counties released Monday.

The 2014 County Economic Tracker shows that 65 of the nation’s 3,069 counties have met or surpassed prerecession levels in four measured categories: jobs, unemployment rate, economic output and home prices.

Those places range from Anderson County, S.C., to McKenzie County, N.D., to Kodiak Island, Alaska.

National employment surpassed 2007 levels during 2014 and the U.S. gross domestic product had fully recovered from the recession by 2011. But the national unemployment rate was 5.6% in December compared with 5% when the recession began seven years earlier. And housing values in much of the country have yet to fully return.

The recovered counties are largely located in energy-rich areas and have small populations. Of the 65 recovered counties, 24 are in Texas and 16 are in North Dakota. The others are generally in the middle of the country, including nine in Minnesota and eight in Kansas.

The US Postal Service plans to sell 56 buildings — so it can lease space more expensively — and the real estate company of the California senator’s husband, Richard Blum, is set to pocket about $1 billion in commissions.

Blum’s company, CBRE, was selected in March 2011 as the sole real estate agent on sales expected to fetch $19 billion. Most voters didn’t notice that Blum is a member of CBRE’s board and served as chairman from 2001 to 2014.

This feat of federal spousal support was ignored by the media after Feinstein’s office said the senator, whose wealth is pegged at $70 million, had nothing to do with the USPS decisions.

When the national debt is $18 trillion, a billion seems like small change.”

” President Barack Obama will need the approval of Congress to realize his proposal for making two years of community college free for students.

So far, that plan doesn’t have an official price tag — other than “significant,” according to White House officials. If all 50 states participate, the proposal could benefit 9 million students each year and save students an average of $3,800 in tuition, the White House said.

But administration officials insisted on a call with reporters Thursday evening that “this is a proposal with bipartisan appeal.”

Case in point: Republican Gov. Bill Haslam, whose brainchild Tennessee Promise program strongly influenced Obama’s proposal. Beginning this year, any high school graduate in that state is eligible for two years of free community college tuition under the Tennessee Promise.”

Regardless of the “bipartisan appeal” how the f**k is a government that is 18 trillion dollars in the hole supposed to pay for yet another feel-good , vote buying entitlement ?Simple mathematics puts a real figure ($34.2 Billion annually) to the White House’s estimate of a “significant” cost and as always with State spending we can be sure the estimate is a very lowball one . WTF ?

And putting aside the cost , where in the Constitution is the “right” to a free education ?

With that in mind , let us not forget what the Obama administration has already “accomplished” in the field of education:

” President Obama’s top telecom regulator just issued his strongest hints yet about a pending plan to regulate Internet providers, and judging by reports from the room, he’s leaning hard toward the most aggressive proposal on the table.

Speaking Wednesday at CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics show, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler took aim at several industry arguments against the use of Title II of the Communications Act to regulate broadband providers. That’s the legal tool that President Obama and many consumer groups say would prevent broadband providers from unfairly discriminating against some Web sites.

Wheeler also appeared to backtrack on one of his previous net neutrality proposals, saying it didn’t go far enough in protecting consumers, according to tweets from the audience.

Now, analysts and policy experts from both sides of the net neutrality debate largely agree that Wheeler will seek to apply Title II to Internet providers after all, more than a year after a federal court tossed out the FCC’s previous net neutrality rules.”

” The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday issued permits to use drones to monitor crops and photograph properties for sale, marking the first time permission has been granted to companies involved in agriculture and real estate.

The exemptions to the current ban on commercial drone flights were granted to Advanced Aviation Solutions in Star, Idaho, for “crop scouting,” and to Douglas Trudeau of Tierra Antigua Realty in Tucson, Arizona.

Advanced Aviation Solutions plans to use its 1.5-pound, fixed-wing eBee drone to make photographic measurements of farm fields, determine the health of crops and look for pests. The aim is to save farmers time walking through fields. The drone also can carry sensors that pick up information invisible to the naked eye, which can help determine which fields need watering.”

Will this latest licensing effort by the Feds morph into yet another example of cronyism and reward towards favored , connected corporations ? Of course . Notice that the film industry was one of the first to gain their exemption from the State .

” Millionaires are sharply divided on their choice for the next President of the U.S., according to the second CNBC Millionaire Survey released today. Yet if a vote were held today, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be the overall favorite among millionaire voters.

The survey polled 500 people with investable assets of $1 million or more, which represents the top 8 percent of American households. According to the survey—a poll evenly split between Democrats, Republicans and Independents—Hillary Clinton is the top choice for 31 percent of millionaires, including 23 percent of Independent millionaires and 5 percent of Republican millionaires.

Clinton gets the support of 38 percent of women millionaires and 27 percent of male millionaires. Among male millionaires of both parties, Hillary is the top choice, with 27 percent.”

Aside from the obvious contradiction regarding the oft-repeated MSM meme of the GOP as the “party of the rich” this poll is notable for the fact that screaming socialist Bernie Sanders bests Fauxcahontas herself . LOL .

The Dems continue to veer more sharply to the left than any NASCAR auto racecar .

” As Americans shop in the health insurance marketplace for a second year, President Obama is depending more than ever on the insurance companies that five years ago he accused of padding profits and canceling coverage for the sick.

Those same insurers have long viewed government as an unreliable business partner that imposed taxes, fees and countless regulations and had the power to cut payment rates and cap profit margins.

But since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership that has been a boon to the nation’s largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in their Medicaid enrollment.

The insurers in turn have provided crucial support to Mr. Obama in court battles over the health care law, including a case now before the Supreme Court challenging the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low- and moderate-income consumers. Last fall, a unit of one of the nation’s largest insurers, UnitedHealth Group, helped the administration repair the HealthCare.gov website after it crashed in the opening days of enrollment.”

It’s all about the cronyism with this administration . Read the rest at NY Times

” For years, President Obama has exploited public concern over “climate change” in order to wage a brutal campaign of genocide against our nation’s birds. Wind turbines have been turned into highly efficient killing machines, mowing down bald eagles in grisly fashion, dozens at a time. A new finding by science suggests that humans may be next.

Health officials in Brown County, Wisconsin have declared a local industrial wind farm to be a “human health hazard,” following a four-year investigation in health complaints from area residents.

Jay Tibbetts, a physician and a member of the Brown County Board of Health, said the board did not come to its decision lightly. “We have 80 people on record who have made health complaints, including a nurse who is going deaf,” Tibbets said. “We can’t just ignore this.”

The Brown County health code defines a human health hazard as “a substance, activity or condition that is known to have the potential to cause acute or chronic illness or death if exposure to the substance, activity or condition is not abated.” [emphasis added]

The ruling is bad news for Duke Energy, the company that owns and operates the wind farm. Not surprisingly, Duke Energy has close ties to the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. In 2012, the company provided a $10 million loan to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, which was never repaid. “

” So President Obama has announced that the Internet should be regulated as a public utility. He’s asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reclassify internet service providers (ISPs) from “information services” under Title I as telecommunications providers under Title II regulatory guidelines. (See here for background on the distinction.)

This is all being done in the name of “Net Neutrality,” keeping the Internet free and open, prohibiting “fast lanes” for certain services and sites, making sure no legal content is blocked, and all other horribles that…have failed to materialize in the absence of increased federal regulation.

Reason contributor and Clemson University economic historian Thomas W. Hazlett defines Net Neutrality as “a set of rules…regulating the business model of your local ISP.” The definition gets to the heart of the matter. There are specific interests who are doing well by the current system—Netflix, for instance—and they want to maintain the status quo. That’s understandable but the idea that the government will do a good job of regulating the Internet (whether by blanket decrees or on a case-by-case basis) is unconvincing, to say the least. The most likely outcome is that regulators will freeze in place today’s business models, thereby slowing innovation and change. “

” After already receiving a controversial $1.6 billion construction loan from U.S. taxpayers, the wealthy investors of a California solar power plant now want a $539 million federal grant to pay off their federal loan.

” This is an attempt by very large cash generating companies that have billions on their balance sheet to get a federal bailout, i.e. a bailout from us – the taxpayer for their pet project,” said Reason Foundation VP of Research Julian Morris. “It’s actually rather obscene.” “

” The Ivanpah solar electric generating plant is owned by Google and renewable energy giant NRG, which are responsible for paying off their federal loan. If approved by the U.S. Treasury, the two corporations will not use their own money, but taxpayer cash to pay off 30 percent of the cost of their plant, but taxpayers will receive none of the millions in revenues the plant will generate over the next 30 years.

” They’re already paying less than the market rate,” said Morris, author of a lengthy report detailing alleged cronyism and corruption in the Obama administration’s green energy programs. “Now demanding or asking for a subsidy in the form of a grant directly paying off the loan is an egregious abuse.” “

Cronyism at its worst . If anyone can afford to pay the taxpayers back for their forced largesse it is certainly Google .

” The announcement of Ron Klain as the new Ebola “czar” checks all the boxes: Harvard Law, longtime Democrat party op, veteran of the Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry campaigns. The problem is, it checks all the wrong boxes. The Progressive myth is that we ought to have a government of experts — top men! — to handle the nation’s problems in a calm, deliberative manner. The reality is that we have a nation of unscrupulous lawyers, amoral apparatchiks and political hacks whose only area of expertise is manipulating the electoral and governmental systems and getting rich by doing so.

I mean, does this make you feel confident?

After learning this week that an infected nurse had traveled by air, Mr. Obama scrapped most of his schedule in favor of meetings with top national security and public health officials. While praising their work to date on Ebola, the president said they had full plates — including the fight against the Islamic State and the onset of flu season — and another person might be needed “just to make sure that we are crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s going forward.”

Islamic State, the flu season, a lethal virus hitherto confined to Africa — just another day at the office for President Golf n’ Fund-raise. What this appointment — made only under duress, and purely for political reasons, since there is absolutely nothing Ron Klain personally can do to stop the spread of the Ebola virus now that the barn doors at our borders and airports have been left wide open for ideological reasons — tells us is this: “

” While corporate welfare, whether in the form of subsidies or bailouts, is more often associated with the federal government, state governments also regularly use generous, targeted subsidy packages to entice corporations to locate within their borders. As these charts show, corporate welfare is a significant problem at the state level, with New York State leading the rest.

This week’s charts use data from the Subsidy Tracker 2.0 dataset compiled by Good Jobs First, a government accountability and smart-growth advocacy group, to display the states (plus the District of Columbia) that disperse the highest amounts and numbers of subsidies, along with the top parent corporations that cumulatively benefit from these subsidies.

Comprehensive data on total state assistance to private businesses have long been hard to access, since the relevant information has been inconsistently scattered among various government reports and websites. The Subsidy Tracker project is an ambitious effort to compile state data on subsidized projects, amounts, beneficiaries, and outcomes in one location. The dataset distinguishes between 11 types of subsidies, including tax credits and rebates, property tax abatements, low-cost loans, infrastructure assistance, and enterprise zones. The dataset is a constantly updated work-in-progress; while it does not yet contain every single state subsidy, it is one of the most comprehensive sources of state subsidies assembled so far. Additionally, the database compilers decided to count sales tax exemptions on business purchases of inputs as a “subsidy.” However, some economists argue that applying sales taxes to input purchases would inefficiently favor vertically integrated firms over firms that purchase inputs from other businesses. Therefore, this kind of sales tax exemption is not a “subsidy,” but an efficient tax policy. Despite these important limitations, the dataset can give us an early glimpse of the rough value of the subsidies that each state issues. The User Guide provides further details on the methodology.

The first chart displays the states known to have extended cumulative subsidies exceeding $1 billion, according to the dataset. In the top portion, the states are ranked, left to right, from the highest amount of subsidies to the lowest amount of subsidies. In the bottom portion, the equivalent number of deals are displayed for each state.

New York state clearly leads the pack, extending a known 71,759 subsidy deals worth $21.71 billion. The second highest corporate beneficiary in the dataset, Alcoa, received a plum deal from the Empire State in 2007, raking in an astounding $5.6 billion to build an aluminum plant. “